... The use of expert knowledge (EK) as an alternative to empirical data is increasing in the ecological disciplines in response to the growing need for rapid decisions that are embraced by local communities and implemented under strong resource constraints. Despite this increasing use, the validity of EK as a data source is still questioned by some who label it as biased or unreliable. Transparency i ...

... There are many indications that for a true understanding of aboveground canopy competition, the concept of symmetric trees is oversimplified and unsatisfactory; in spite of that, this concept is still commonly used in forest ecology research. In this study we analyzed and quantified the effect of tree/crown asymmetry on crown-to-crown interactions and canopy light availability with respect to tree ...

... While the use of truffles in Poland has a long tradition, for historical reasons this knowledge was almost lost. Currently, truffles and truffle orchards are again receiving public attention. For example, the Polish State Forests supported the establishment of truffle orchards by the Forestry Research Institute. In recent years, knowledge concerning these unique hypogeous fungi has been disseminat ...

... Forests is a Swiss open access journal in the field of forestry and forest ecology founded in 2010. Currently, the journal celebrates its 10th anniversary. Therefore, the purpose of this research for the special issue A Decade of Forests Open Access Publishing is to present a whole bibliometric overview of the journal and highlight the state of the art of forestry as an interdisciplinary knowledge ...

... This paper presents “e-praxis”, a Web-based Decision Support System (DSS), to assist the land Characterization Acts (CA) issuing process, performed by the Greek Forest Service (GFS). The issue under investigation is the characterization of specific or wider land areas as sylvan (forest ecosystem in general) or not, based on the applicable legislation and the fundamental principles of Forest Ecolog ...

... KEY MESSAGE: Changes in tree’s climate sensitivity during their ontogenetic development is best assessed with stem diameter classes, which can be calculated retrospectively from the cumulative ring width. Climate affects tree growth but the effect size can be modulated by other variables, including tree’s age and size. To assess how climate sensitivity changes over the life of a tree, previous stu ...

... Applications of spatial point processes for large and complex data sets with inhomogeneities as encountered, example, in tropical rain forest ecology call for estimation methods that are both statistically and computationally efficient. We propose a novel second‐order quasi‐likelihood procedure to estimate the parameters for a second‐order intensity reweighted stationary spatial point process. Our ...

... The Forestry and Game Management Research Institute (Czechia) was founded on 31ˢᵗ October 1921 with the establishment of the Forest Protection Department. In the era before and after the World War II, several more institutes were founded, and they underwent a number of reorganizations during the 1950s and finally took the form more or less corresponding with the current one. The institute went thr ...

... Forested land in the eastern United States is owned by a complex mix of public and private owners, often with highly varied objectives and uses. There is an increasing trend at local scales of community forestry programs that use community-based decision making to determine what type of management will occur on town-owned forests. Within the suburban town of Weston, Massachusetts, this type of coo ...

... Machine learning, an important branch of artificial intelligence, is increasingly being applied in sciences such as forest ecology. Here, we review and discuss three commonly used methods of machine learning (ML) including decision-tree learning, artificial neural network, and support vector machine and their applications in four different aspects of forest ecology over the last decade. These appl ...

... Lichens, symbiotic organisms consisting from mycobionts (fungi) and photobionts (algae and/or cyanobacteria), play a substantial role in boreal coniferous forests. They may form thick mat that significantly interferes with young plants, mosses and rest of understory vegetation. Lichens synthesize more than one thousand of secondary metabolites, from which usnic acid is one of the most abundant. It ...

... Current knowledge of climate change effects on forest ecology and species conservation should be linked to understanding of the past-time. Abies pinsapo forests constitute a model of an endangered ecosystem, highly vulnerable to ongoing warming, whose populations have been declining for centuries, while the drivers of this local depletion trend remain poorly understood. We hypothesized that long-t ...

... Coexistence of multiple species is a fundamental aspect of plant and forest ecology. Although spatial arrangement of leaves within crowns is an important determinant of light interception and productivity, shoot structure varies considerably among coexisting canopy species. We investigated the relative importance of structural traits in determining the light availability of leaves (I) and light in ...

... The influence of tidal inundation on mangrove vegetation species distribution is a key concept in mangrove ecology, and is especially important when considering the vulnerability of mangroves to predicted future sea level rise. While the tidal inundation-vegetation relationship defines a huge number of studies in mangrove science, it is not a new concept, but was mapped in the 1920s by scientists ...

... Plant biomass consumers (mammalian herbivory and fire) are increasingly seen as major drivers of ecosystem structure and function but the prevailing paradigm in temperate forest ecology is still that their dynamics are mainly bottom‐up resource‐controlled. Using conceptual advances from savanna ecology, particularly the demographic bottleneck model, we present a novel view on temperate forest dyna ...

... Despite being instrumental in forest ecology, the definition and nature of shade tolerance are complex and not beyond controversy. Moreover, the role it plays in the trait–demography relationship remains unclear. Here, we hypothesize that shade tolerance can be achieved by alternative combinations of traits depending on the species' functional group (evergreen vs. deciduous species) and that its a ...

... AIMS: Important aspects of plant community dynamics depend on interactions between plant species that affect the processes of recruitment and the replacement of dead individuals by new ones. These interactions blend in the replacement network of the community. The qualitative and functional structure of replacement networks can provide insights on community stability properties. The goal of this s ...